Myesha Williams, Program Associate of New Voices Are Rising, has full attention of all the attendants of the farewell event as she hands out individual certificates to the interns one by one while everyone watches on. The end of the program unfortunately has arrived and on this day last goodbyes are said to many as some become emotional. Hugged and thanked by Jill, the interns receive their certificates of completion and give their last speech for the attentive party- goers for their last time of the summer program.
New Voices Are Rising gave self- motivated high school students a chance to take advantage of its summer internship program to learn about climate change and global warming so to have a more heightened sense of their surroundings; advocacy skills was also taught to the students.
“It was really relaxing… it was like family, like home where we could discuss things and even our own ideas,” Panha Sethy, Oakland High.
The New Voices Are Rising program is directed by Myesha Williams and Jill Ratner (co- founder of the Rose Foundation) who have a history of fieldwork in environmental justice. New Voices Are Rising focuses on educating the interns about consequences of climate change and environmental injustices like natural disasters and polluting facilities that causes health issues being concentrated in a heavily residential area.
One of the interns happens to be a young male. Salvador Mateo who attends Mandela High and decided to join New Voices Are Rising as a result of encouragement from his law teacher Mrs. Arabia. Mrs. Arabia specified that the summer internship would educate him about global warming and help him with his advocacy skills which interested him into joining. “In joining the program I would be able to show that my community is affected by global warming and that together we can help prevent it from getting worse.”
Salvador was assigned to be placed and work at least once a week at Center for Environmental Health in downtown Oakland as were all the other interns but at diverse organizations throughout the Bay Area. His worksite worked on educating and preventing mainly teenagers and kids from buying merchandise that contained lead which can cause cancer.
“Well, New Voices Are Rising was not only fun… the program was amazing. The best part was just coming everyday and seeing everyone on a daily basis,” said Salvador.
Panha Sethy became interested in being apart of New Voices Are Rising for the summer after he had a little conversation with Jill Ratner. “First Jill came to talk to me about how I can help prevent global warming and health issues so I wanted to join.”
Panha attends the Environmental Science Academy and there was educated about the environment. He was placed to work at Oakland City Slicker Farms; there he planted produce and went around to people’s houses to help them with backyard gardening. The organization aims to provide fresh local foods and cut down on emissions from transporting food long distances.
Throughout the program the interns experienced many different educational events from field trips to Bayview Hunters Point, the Port of Oakland, and the Toxic Tour of Richmond to having conversations with guest speakers like Michael Kent and Rachael Morello-Frosch. Overall the program gave the interns a chance to learn about community health and climate issues so that they in turn would be more aware and might even decide to do something about it to make a better difference in the world. New Voices Are Rising brilliantly educated the interns about these problems in the world and had many group discussions on several occasions on what can be done to better the problems itself not just focusing on what is disturbing Earth.
“Before I felt that Global Warming was not really important and when I came to the program I was taught it was a huge issue. I live in the nation that pollutes and contributes the most to climate change,” said Salvador. "Before the program I did not feel that strong, I did not have much knowledge about air quality and the now after joining the program I understand the impact of it and that everyone is not affected by these problems in the same way."
After all the time the interns spent together, their last project was to give a presentation to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in San Francisco, California.
“The best part of the program was talking to the BAAQMD to show that us youths have a voice. We talked to them mainly on their draft and reflected on it giving them ideas and recommendations on how to improve air quality.” Panha
The BAAQMD dealt with being in charge of regulating laws. The time that the interns spent with the program, at the end of the day these intellectual high school students started on their path to making a difference already just by speaking to the district.
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